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Mild Mannered Reviews - Specials

Trinity #37

Trinity #37

Scheduled to arrive in stores: February 11, 2009

Cover date: February 11, 2009

Back-Up Story: "And They Fought"

Main Writers: Kurt Busiek
Main Pencillers: Mark Bagley
Main Inker: Art Thibert
Main Colorist: Pete Pantazis
Cover Art: Jesus Merino

Main Story: "A Special Dark Angry Flappy Toy"

Back-Up Story Writer: Kurt Busiek and Fabian Nicieza
Back-Up Story Penciller: Scott McDaniels
Back-Up Story Inker: Andy Owens
Back-Up Story Colors: Allen Passalaqua

Reviewed by: Barry Freiman with Neal Bailey and Jeffrey Bridges

Click to enlarge



Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman fight over who is the godliest of gods. In the process, they scorch the alien land. Wonder Woman screams for them to hold. They see the destruction they've caused and look at it for several months. They decide to work together to make the world a better place instead of working separately. They feel a sense of familiarity to the supporting characters (who have been in stasis during all of this).

To be continued...



Back-Up Story: "A Special Dark Angry Flappy Toy"

Punch and Jewelee are hooked up to a necrotechnic scanner that uses their essences to seek out kindred spirits - other DCU fools. With it, Morgaine le Fay, Enigma, Konvikt (and his little pal) find the Joker who is somehow controlling a chaos rift. Craziness is the theme of Joker's world, which is full of sentient vegetables chasing kids. Konvikt and friend wonder where the adults are and they find a room with giant appliances filled with murder victims.

Joker returns with le Fay to play the Fool in her Dark Arcana. Meanwhile, Punch and Jewelee, having seen things from inside the Joker's mind, are gushing blood from their noses and are either dead or really, really injured. Enigma suspects they may have made a terrible mistake.

To be continued...



Barry's Review:

1Main Story - 1: Hey kids! A moral! I feel like I wandered into the middle of an episode of the live-action "Shazam/Isis Power Hour" or a Wonder Twins segment on "Super Friends". Sorry Kurt, but I already got all the moral out of this train wreck of a series I need: the moral is don't volunteer to review a weekly book until you know it's not going to stink like a slowly-decomposing-in-a-hot-sun rotting rat carcass.

2Main Art - 2: Do I blame a talented artist like Mark for a half issue of explosions, which are essentially pages of orange and yellow booms and flames? Or do I blame the writer for only giving the artist booms and flames to deal with? Hmmm. I blame both.

1Back-Up Story - 1: I know that a lot of people really enjoyed the Emperor Joker story arc told a few years back in the Superman titles. I wasn't crazy about it (bad pun intended). A super-Joker is boring to me. Seeing what Joker creates with deity like powers here in Trinity makes the Joker less frightening.

If you're going to give Joker the power to give form to his craziness, it should quite frankly make you want to throw up your guts and tear out your eyeballs simultaneously. That's how f-ed up the Joker is. It wouldn't be a roomful of dead adults amidst larger-than-life appliances. It would be a roomful of dead children, tortured animals, adults (at least) engaged in atrociously violent sex acts, and the Joker literally pleasuring himself to the sounds of horror, depravity, and death all around him. It would be atrocious, even more atrocious than this series has been.

Enigma was an interesting character when they gave him his back-story. Now he's a real flip-flopper. You can't change the essence of reality without impacting on life and death. That should be obvious. In the DCU, involving the Joker is always a bad idea. That should also be obvious. Oh and this comic bites - that is more than obvious; it's fact.

So let's go to the scoreboard and add the Joker to the list of characters Busiek and Company have grossly mischaracterized in Trinity. The score: Busiek, 37; the fans, a big zero.

2Back-Up Art - 2: The Joker doesn't look any more intimidating than he acts.

4Cover Art - 4: I'll take my Trinity creativity where I can get it. After buying this book for 37 weeks only so I can review it for the site, it's nice to see a logo with a different color background. Beyond that, it's not a bad looking cover. I really like the brick effect surrounding the stain glass window.

Neal's Review:

1Main Story - 1: Babytalk named Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, who we have spent multiple issues examining as thinly veiled visions of their DC counterparts, are shown to murder countless tens of thousands of people in a petty war.

They then solve that war in one conversation that isn't incredibly persuasive, and are suddenly beneficent because they raise a generation without war.

Elitist god figures who live in a citadel, kill, and squabble over power. Sure sounds like the Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman I enjoy reading! How about you?

My Trinity name is Neuwl, by the way. The difference between me and my Trinity Mary Sue is that my skin is reptilian, and I can fly, and I'm empathic, and I also have the power to turn into a cat. And Batman is my best friend. And I'm THE ONE. Oh! And I wear visor sunglasses and can cry healing tears.

What? What do you mean random stuff thrown onto a page without meaning or focus isn't cool! My friend Koowrt told me it was!

3Main Art - 3: Most of the action here is strong, but the problem is the character work. Superman is very stiff, Wonder Woman with the boob window seems out of character. Batman is rather cool, as are the backgrounds, but it felt like things were a bit rushed. Not horrible, but not great.

1Back-Up Story - 1: Guess what, folks. You'd never know it, but Joker's CRAZY! So let's summarize some of his history in a thinly veiled filler story and make him do some wacky things! Because Joker does wacky things without point! Insert joke here.

And hey, let's just make the story MORE confusing by taking the guy whose laugh was stolen and making him a focal ally for the people who stole said voice!

(But this is a different Earth, Neal!)

And yet, same Joker.

5Back-Up Art - 5: Phenomenal use of paneling. Incredible character work. I wish it were something I enjoyed reading more in terms of story, but as a comic book style, I really like this art.

4Cover Art - 4: This is actually a really, really cool image. I took a point because, sadly, they put Wonder Woman under the Superman symbol. Why? Got me. Irksome, though. This could have been the first five in some time.

Jeffrey's Review:

1Main Story - 1: A big fight! Superman wants to kill people! The Trinity fighting out of character kills innocents, and then they all arbitrarily stop and the world is sunshine and roses.

Yep, makes just as much sense as every other issue.

Are we there yet?

3Main Art - 3: Well that was a lot of orange fire and smoke. And odd, lame costumes. And Wondy still looks a bit like a drag queen.

Good times?

1Back-Up Story - 1: Hey, for no reason at all people who've happily been villains for three years' worth of comics (we're on issue 36, remember) suddenlyŠ don't want to be, and the Atom somehow knows this via no reason whatsoever.

Whee indeed.

3Back-Up Art - 3: This was really odd, as Joker looked different in every panel. I get that was kind of the idea, butŠ it was odd.

4Cover Art - 4: Irrelevant Trinity cover? Check.

At least this one is nice to look at, though.


Mild Mannered Reviews

2009

Note: Month dates are from the issue covers, not the actual date when the comic went on sale.

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